Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) is used to establish a connection between a client and a server so that a multimedia file such as a 3GP, or MP4 file can be streamed from the streaming server to the client using Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP). To stream a set of files, the client has to request each file separately, and a separate RTSP connection is established for each file with a separate RTP, Real-Time Control Protocol (RTCP) port pair establishment.
In a conventional way as described in the references incorporated herewith, a separate RTSP connection needs to be established for each streaming file. An RTSP connection establishes separate RTP and RTCP ports: an RTP port, RTP packet can carry any data with real-time characteristics, such as interactive audio and video. On a separate RTCP port, RTCP packets provide information about data transfer quality that a streaming application can use to make local adjustment. For example, if network congestion is detected, the streaming application could lower the data rate or the resolution of the streaming file. When a request for streaming multiple multimedia files is made, the process of opening and closing a series of RTSP and RTP connections is repeated until all the files are streamed.
This extraneous activity of repeatedly opening and closing RTSP and RTP connections can lead to more time and network bandwidth being consumed by the connection overhead than by the streaming of the media files themselves. This is particularly undesirable when the communication bandwidth is limited or many smaller-sized multimedia files are streamed. Thus, there is a need for an efficient multimedia delivery mechanism to minimize the RTSP and RTP connection overhead.
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an XML based Web feed format that contains a summary of content from an associated web site or a podcast publisher. A user who wishes to subscribe to a frequently-updated web content or a podcast obtains an RSS feed from the publisher and checks for an update on the feed using software called an “RSS reader” or “an aggregator”, which occasionally re-visits the podcast website. If an update is available, it is downloaded to the user's computer or multimedia device such as an MP3 player or a cellular phone. Since the information regarding the update status on the subscribing podcast is easily available from the RSS feed, the RSS reader need not compare the podcast to download with the latest local version. However, the aggregation of podcasts is limited to the RSS channels that a user subscribes to, thus there is a need for a dynamic aggregation mechanism that provides flexibility and configurability of RSS channels.